Mujahideen
by D72
Summary: Post Return Of The Jedi, with a Post 9/11 mentality.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Sam Krayt. A name like that comes with baggage. People think it has something to do with being tough. In reality, it's related to the family curse of always screwing things up.

I grew up on haulers with my family. Transporting low priority goods for the empire without asking questions. Any time we'd be dirtside long enough for schooling, the name led to a lot of me getting my nerf herded.

So I became a geek. Stayed inside, kept my head down. Tech support on a hauler may not be glamorous, but it pays well. Add into that Combination slicer, handyman, and occasional plumber. Jack of all trades, master of none.

But no one wants the sewage feed reversing polarity.

I was two years into a five-year hitch when the first death star blew, and the galaxy went to hell. Doesn't matter that our hauler was fully accredited and licensed, every port we stopped in, we were the enemy. You can't really see a stink eye through a Stormie helmet, but you can feel it. The tension, the readiness to draw a blaster at any provocation, times were tense.

When it all fell apart, flags changed. We were the new republic. They tried to put a nice shiny face on it, but times were rough, and space got rougher. We'd get taxed six ways from Sunday from every tin pot inspector who managed to scav themselves a badge during the fight. Criminal scum became the law, and they liked things that way. Kept my head down all the same, you don't want an ex-pirate getting twitchy. I'd been a stand up guy all my life, but that no longer paid the bills. I started a pirate business off holonet broadcasts. Not everyone could afford a license, and poor people get bored too. Simple reality program crap, Real Housewives of Coruscant, you know, trash. It helped that reality programming was low security access, but you still needed a license to view it. It helped that the digital rights management was coded like a gran wrote it. Lots of traps, and the subtlety of a thermal detonator. Later they had protocol droids update it, but the back doors were already there, and the protocol droids were just prissy. Show the system what it wanted to see, and you were golden.

So me, the big smuggler of crap entertainment. Wasn't much of a crime lord, and it got me into the wrong channel one day.

The butcher, sorry, Hero of The Republic, Luke Skywalker, had established a new order of Jedi, and they went around, the peacekeepers nobody asked for. Rumors went out that the emperor had been one of them, and gone mad on the power. I bought it, those bantha spit, holier than thou types started out humble, but grew a stick up their ass real quick. Things had to be done in a morally right way. I spent six months in a new republic "re-education center" when they hooked of all things, an Astromech Droid into the network, when they saw "abnormalities". I got the spit kicked out of me by new republic goons who thought I was spreading subversive messages through the holonet, and I got to talk with a Jedi "Mind healer" every third day. Told me to let go of my anger. Yeah. Right.

When I was sprung, I had a hell of a time finding a new ship to take me on, but the new republic wasn't as stable as they'd like to think they were. Good leaders keep the people fed, and I was a damn good maintenance man. I kept our old, scrap ship running long past her service date, and the protein packs moving. Granted I wasn't a trained mechanic, and my work wasn't the shiniest, but I kept the ship moving, more or less.

It was a hell of a time dropping the block they had coded on all my old access points, but it was easy as hell once I got past it. Didn't do it as often though. Sabbac champion was lower security than the housewives, for some damn reason that'd become a high security broadcast.

We also had Jedi rotate through from time to time. Not so much that they were traveling anywhere so much as keeping an eye on the populace. Defenders of freedom my ass.

And that brings us back to the ill-fated broadcast, and as it was, I had a connection. That damn head shrink from the re-education center. We'd dropped her on some damn moon off Endor. She'd wanted to talk about how I was getting back into "real society" and keeping my nose clean. I'm not sure what it was, but she couldn't get into my brain like she had in lockup. It was like she was preoccupied. Not that I cared. I had nothing to say to the busybody.

So once I was sliced in and recording the latest sabbac champion ep, someone else sliced in too. Not as invisible as I was, they were brute force all the way. Feed was grainy, but the content was clear. Teddy bears. They looked like teddy bears, but they were screaming their furry little heads off. Damned if I knew what they were yelling about, but they had someone on their knees, hood over their head.

And when they pulled that hood off, my stomach ran colder 'n Hoth. It was the shrink. And they had her lightsaber lit. I'll spare you the details, but they didn't go for a clean cut.

And so here I am, in reeducation again. Funny, the last one had windows. And the guards didn't carry lightsabers.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the shows Sam, Can't much afford a license now I'm out the service.

Yeah, I heard about the jedi. Can't say we didn't warn em, but the new republic is so full of themselves they don't have time to listen to an ex-troop. Funny, we always said there was no such thing as an ex-troop, just retired or dead.

That moon though? Bad news man. I was stationed on the Designate Station 2, and I was on a shuttle rotating down to reinforce the garrison there. I woulda said glass the bears, but they had some sort of Mission Crit infrastructure down there. I wasn't supposed to know that, but it cut down on the frustration.  
Some 501's had been drilling us on fighting in the muck. Spooky troopers. They wore the same uniform as I did, but there is something just, not right with 501's. They put way too many troops into the bacta tanks. They seemed to really enjoy the work. Some guys think they were vets all the way back to the clone wars, but that's probably just nerf spit.

On the training though, they did some weird stuff.

They'd stick us in a trash compactor without our helmets, so we could get used to stink. One of my squaddies said it stank worse than dagobah, but I've never been there. Sometimes they'd throw some pests in, make us work on fighting in adverse terrain.

They also straightened our backs with the stories of attrition. One troop had a big mouth. Straight out of the academy, ready to git some!

The 501 gave him some, put him right out of service.

They led us into a briefing room. they'd set up a screen and showed us just what those "Teddy bears" were made of. Sticks and stones man, Sticks and 'll even start eating while the poor bastard is still screaming with one of those tree branches rammed through his side. Dark Primitive warfare man.

I'd had no idea stuff had got so hot, it was the Rebel Scum what had mucked things up.

I'd heard the stink was the only problem before the rebel cancer showed up. The Teddy bears had mostly left us alone. Sure we'd fry a couple when they'd check the perimeter, but that's SOP. Wasn't even like they were testing the borders, just hunting parties who got lost.

Sorry for rambling man, I'll get to the point. We never hit dirtside, we were about half way down when DS2 blew. We were stuck between a rock and a rebel fleet. We chose the fleet. Not much of a point rotating down to guard a field generator for a station that no longer existed.

We got captured by some fish, and spent a long time in lockup. Manaan man. The Rebels didn't much care what I had to say. Listen, You need to disappear. That broadcast with the Jedi? Too hot man, They're going to use the jedi to track you down. Bug out while you still can.  



End file.
